the making of IAH into a frontier in critical care research

By IAH MEDIA

Ishaka Adventist Hospital and Health Training Institutions (IAHHTI) is on its way to becoming a leader in research in Southwestern Uganda.

Having existed for the past 75 years, the hospital has had a strong impact on health of the communities in the area and has now taken a path to contributing to the area of research in different health problems affecting children, mothers, and others.

On 7th November 2024, IAHHTIs officially held the first ever internal scientific conference with emphasis on critical care. During this event, members of staff from both the hospital and its health training schools presented and discuss their scholarly work.

The conference featured Ass. Prof. Irene Andia Biraaro, a member of the board and an infectious diseases physician and associate Professor in the department of internal medicine, Makerere University College of health sciences as a keynote speaker with Research and Institutions as her topic, and Dr. Stevens Spady, an emergency physician and Medical Director at Trios Wound and Hyperbaric center, USA as guest speaker.

The two speakers highlighted the need for advocating for IAHHTI to be a research-led institution saying the move provided IAHHTI a unique opportunity of exploring into critical care. This scientific conference was themed “Optimizing critical care in tropical regions tackling infectious and non-communicable challenges.”

Topics

• Prevalence and Factors associated with Malnutrition in children under 5 attending Ishaka Adventist Hospital Outpatient department by Ms. Kusiima Mary Lydia.
• Cumulative Antibiogram Analysis of Key Bacterial Pathogens Isolated from Clinical Specimens at Ishaka Adventist Hospital (November 2022 – September 2024) by Mr. Aaron Tumukunde.
• The Burden of virologic failure and its determinants among children with HIV in tropics: A systemic review and Meta – Analysis by Mr. Amon Kanyesigye
• Laboratory profiles and their value among critically ill patients at Ishaka Adventist Hospital by Mr. Benjamin Nuwareeba
• Prevalence factors and neonatal outcomes associated with preterm births by Dr. Sebasore Cosmus.
• The prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of surgical site infections after caesarean section at Ishaka Adventist Hospital by Dr. Ocora Joel Opiyo.

Advocating for IAH as a research-led institution contributes to knowledge generation and policies, advances knowledge and critical thinking, informs decision-making and quality improvement, enhances health care problem solving, translates acquired knowledge, brings in income, and strengthens corroborations, among other benefits.

This milestone also provides the teams an important channel for exchange of information between different researchers on the hill.

The arrangement will benefit the team and present them an opportunity of participating in other academic conferences in and outside the hospital in the immediate and distant future.

In the IAH setting, research is critical to improving patient outcomes and the quality of healthcare. It helps the teams to understand what works, what doesn’t work, and why. It is also essential for developing new treatments and therapies.

The presenters said the conference was a key way and springboard for them to share ideas and methods with their colleagues over and above giving them an opportunity to network, learn about other areas of study, and seek collaborations, hoping to gain more experiences in future arrangements.

What they say about the conference

We have many patients who come to the hospital emergency ward in need of critical care. We want to be frontiers in critical care research to help people who seek critical care. We hope that we will keep collaborating with other academic institutions and faith-based health facilities so that we have a good research-led institution and we hope that at the end of the day, Ugandans will benefit from the findings that we get – Ass. Prof. Irene Andia Biraaro

We have recognized the transformative potential of research in advancing our hospital activities. This conference highlighted a key gap in our academic presence, with only three publications currently indexed on PubMed. To address this, we are now committed to expanding our visibility through targeted research efforts. Our goal is to develop a robust research agenda focused on health-related topics, environmental conservation, and lifestyle medicine. By establishing Ishaka Adventist Hospital as a hub of evidence-based knowledge, we can attract partnerships, grants, and increased patient trust, ultimately driving growth in our clinical services – Dr. Brian Musinguzi, Medical Director

We are in an era when infections and ever escalating disease burden among the communities that we serve. As health service providers, we are charged with not only treating people but also doing research into how these diseases can be investigated to provide lasting solutions, and you can only do this through research. So, investing our resources into research is not a mistake if we want to make this a center of excellence in research, and now that we have started, this is going to be our norm, meaning we shall be having conferences every year – Ms. Lydia Komugisha, Executive Director, IAH

I benefited from this presentation by gaining more confidence to stand in public.  Also I learnt a lot from other presenters and this informed me that there is need to analyze more data to improve on our services. I wish to continue making several presentations to improve on the research skills– Ms. Kusiima Mary Lydia

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